Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationReally intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.

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Sep 28, 2006

In a recent conversation with a friend and business associate, I bring up the "slow food, slow sex, slow travel" movements. He perks up, "Slow sex?"

I purposedly chose the provocative title of "Barbershops, Trading Posts, Coffeehouses, Parisian Salons: How Intimacy Seals Deals" for a session I led at MarCamp held Tuesday at France Telecom/Orange because marketers' intentions are nearly always suspect.

Seals deals? Sounds slimey, eh?

And people sometimes think that's who I am: I'm a role. I am a marketer (pssst, I'm just me). So if I'm a marketer, I must confess that I'm into slow marketing lately. Not that it's necessarily opposed to buzz marketing, but slow marketing is a focus on human, one-on-one connections sans stress ("yikes, will it scale?!?') rather than a focus on the mass, aggregate, broadcast-blast level.

Slow marketing is intricately tied to slow conversation, naked conversations. It's very very old-world. I learned it by osmosis in the piazzas of Italy, the cafes of Vienna, the chicken-buses of Guatemala, and I let it seep inside while chatting on donated furniture in a makeshift wooden shelter where a family that lost everything, including a son, shared tea and cookies and their tears with me.

Slow marketing's a bit harder to map out a concrete campaign for. I had no intention of spending the entire afternoon at Vino Locale in Palo Alto (I was checking them out for an upcoming interview series, and a potential hosted salon). I hadn't anticipated that Mary Beth's favorite book was East of Eden, or that she was a English Lit major/Art History minorwho worked in high-tech marketing for 25 years and is working on a novel herself or that Mike Mann of Mann Cellars (yes, they grow wine not just garlic in Gilroy) would walk in and open his silky Syrah 2004 for a tasting or Lynn Fielder, a talented jeweler and art curator for Vino Locale to sit down beside me, or Kirpal, a rosé lover and software entrepreneur, to waltz in after his lunch at Zibbabu because he heard the laughter.

"Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn." - Elizabeth Lawrence (from one of my favorite slow magazines, La Vie Claire)

"No sane adult moves to the Bay Area for the lifestyle," says Paul Kedrosky. He, he, well, my sanity is questionable, but I am living here precisely for the lifestyle. I live a Mediterranean-inspired slow-food life right in the heart of Silicon Valley (yup, I reside near HP and Apple).

And I'm not alone. "There was an increased hunger for connection, and people were eager to find out about these things - the farmer, the fisherman, the cheesemaker," says Jim Denevan of Santa Cruz. Jim's company, Outstanding In the Field, brings one-evening impromptu restaurant right to small farms. In 2004, he took his farmer dinners national rippling out from his Northern California roots.

Denevan says it was modeling in Europe in his twenties that planted the seed: "Seeing the richness there inspired me.When you ate at little cafes and agriturismos, it was all very intimate, very direct. I remember a beautiful old farmhouse with a kitchen garden and vineyards right out the door. It really left an impression." (All Denevan quotes from article "Feasts of the Field", La Vie Claire, Fall 2006)

Slow marketing? Denevan: "It's amazing hearing from the people who make the products, who create the culture of the table. You get to hear the farmers telling their story, how and where they spend their days."

Slow travel? When life is a possible poem, then it becomes one grand adventure. Even marketing. A pilgrimage of discovery, mystery, serendipity, synchronicity, spontaneity. Joy:

For one friend who had difficulty remembering details from his travels, I suggested he take on the task of writing a poem every day during his journey abroad. The daily task proved impossible for him, so he decided to focus his attention on a one-week stretch through Paris, Prague and Florence. To this day, his memories of that time are the fondest of all his travels because, as he has told me, "when everything is a possible poem, the world is suddenly far more interesting." - from The Art of Pilgrimage, by Phil Cousineau

And slow sex? What's the hurry, we'll get around to that eventually too.

But the slogan 'Think globally, act locally' gradually took on new meaning for me over that last 20 months post-tsunami.

I was overwhelmed by its sheer size when I first moved to the Bay Area on October 30, 2002. A shimmmering sea of endless headlights and brakelights lit up I-280 as cars crawled their way from San Jose to Palo Alto on my first evening drive and I wondered silently to myself, "Omigod, what have I done?" It may have not helped to be swallowed up in the crowds the next evening at the Castro Street Halloween street party in San Francisco.

The intricate, extensive familial, friendship and community ties in tsunami-torn countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand on my return one-year anniversary trip left an indelible impression on me that I still can't articulate in any blog post. One day perhaps a book would be a large enough canvas to set the context and I might begin to scratch the surface of the person to person threads in that fabric that nurtured and unified the neighborhoods and families I visited.

I saw my Mom last week in Las Vegas (it's the anti-thesis of human-scale in my book). She was reminiscing about the strolls, parks, festivals and house porches of her hometown Guines, Cuba. "When I was a kid growing up, we'd play ball in the street. We didn't buy a ball. We'd tear cigarette packs and newspapers into strips."

"Weave them into tight balls. No Nintendo. No tv. We had so much fun."

"Around here, we have walls, not neighborhoods."

I don't think she was merely referring to gated communities.

Every day of my two-month pilgrimage back one year after the tsunami, I learned everything I ever needed to know about social capital or 'social networking'. For instance, watching the friends gather that sultry evening by the pool at a Moratuwa, Sri Lanka hotel frequented by locals from soap opera stars to honeymooners. They were all successful business owners. They talked of country clubs, the tea country, safaris, their families, their favorite churches, God, travelling up and down the tsunami-hit coast to distribute dahl and rice and other supplies they'd bought. They'd seen each other grow, their children grow for the last twenty years. They don't really need LinkedIn.

I'll be meditating, praying, talking one-on-one, and being present with folks at Ground Zero in Manhattan on the five-year-anniversary of 9/11. Doubt I'll necessarily be blogging however. This is one-on-one, quiet, private, intimate. Call 408 513 7324 cell or email me (yes I can check email from my cell too) if you're also at Ground Zero or simply inclined to reach out Monday.

I see that he enjoys personal, authentic information about Venture Capital, music, and that he already reads the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal so don’t bother sending him anything that already exists in those two publications." [Hyperlinks added ;-) ] - "Gesture Firestorm Hits," Scobleizer, August 1, 2006

Can algorithms fill this role?The real question: Why should they...

When a human being can naturally grok the gestalt of a moment in its totality - without a single algorithm. (We could call it intuition, instinct, impulse, inclination, gut feel, being wholly present to another person.) Singularity, Turing machine or not, mark my words, machines will never ever grok the way humans can instantaneously.

When the intention of theperson-to-personreaching out is what typically matters in the first place; the gesture's secondary. (Spare me your algorithmically-generated gestures, I already get hordes of spam.)

What do I mean?

Gestures based on reads on my past - anyone's past, and that includes yesterday or five minutes ago - often feel as dissonant and anachronistic as seeing a Rolex on the wristband on a commoner in a Victorian-period comedy of manners film. Something just feels off.

I find myself bemused at best, unseen at worst, when people come up to me who've not talked with me in ages and proceed to act as if I'm stuck in some time machine. They bring up old topics (no, I don't expect even my friends to read my blog, simply ask: What are you into now?) and introduce me to others based on petrified and stagnant historical data.

Recent examples of algorithms gone awry. If you think algorithms are only a machine function, think again. Humans can easily go into full-blown if-then-else algorithmic-mode:

The wish-fulfilling gesture robot scans my last few posts and concludes I adore vodka, wine, coffee. Very wrong on all three counts. I'm actually a water and tea gal. Better to be curious and ask me why I'm writing about those three. However, a perfect gesture would certainly be to invite me as your guest to Paris this fall.

I doubt that I'm alone in the fact that the full expanse of my online life represents only a wee fraction of myself. Nothing I've written in over three years would lead you to believe I'm a huge fan of Gershwin and the flapper jazz culture of the 1920's. And more importantedly no algorithm could piece togetherwhy I am. Yet a human might grok it's so sheerly through resonance and intuition.

I get tons of unsolicited PR emails written purportedly by human beings, quite often disguised as friendly 'gestures'. They scan my bio and perhaps the last few posts. Fair enough. The thing is most humans are astute enough to pick up the true intention behind gestures. I have received only one genuine unsolicited email of late from a intriguing woman that found me via a search on the term "renaissance." My email back to her since I was so floored by her perceptiveness and authenticity was basically, Who are you and how did you find me?

"Would you like some of spinach-and-egg omelette I'm making?" my housemate would often ask in the morning. Typically my answer was "Sure." After about the seventh consecutive 'no' this May he stopped asking. On a July 4th outing to his cabin in the Sierras we visited his neighbor's goat and llama farm - I kid you not, the couple's name was MacDonald! They gave us farm fresh eggs from their chicken coup on our way out the door. The next morning I overhear an algorithm's gears churning as omelettes were frying. My other housemate is explaining to the guest-cook: "Evelyn doesn't eat eggs anymore."

IF Evelyn doesn't eat eggs in May AND Evelyn doesn't eat eggs in June AND

So I corrected the algorithm-writer and I ate eggs that morning because they were fresh and came from a small farm where the folks loved their animals such that I resonated with the whole place. (You might surmise currently today August 3rd that I am not eating industrial meat, fish, eggs; but it's the why that's the crucial question.)

I met pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon briefly at BlogHer. She grokked me. (Grokking happens in a split-second.) She intuitively sensed a fellow lover of seasonal, locali food. She offered me her last copy of Edible San Francisco that I was perusely with obvious relish. We've theoretically never met before. I've never read her blog. She's never read mine. Yet Instant Recognition Happened. No algorithm required. Plus nearly no surprise - more akin to 'yeah I knew that' - when I read in the magazine's bio blurb that she is a lover of stone fruits too.

I recently bought "Between Friends: M.F.K. Fisher and Me" (at Leigh's) about Jeannette's Ferrary's friendship with the legendary epicurean. Now, even though I had dinner with Susan Getgood Friday night she did not know this. She sent me this email Monday: "[T]he peach recipes reminded me of a book I just finished – My Life in France by Julia Child. If you haven’t, you should read it. Julia and her nephew co-writer really bring Paris of the late 40s and early 50s alive. A time remarkably close in many ways to salon culture. I ate it up like a peach." She's totally right of course. I would love this book. It was a valuable, considered recommendation.

An attuned publicist sent me copy of Thich Nhat Hanh's new book, The Energy of Prayer. Now this was the very first unsolicited book outside the business book category I've ever received. It was like a timely blessing that dropped from Heaven. I felt someone knew. I continue to get tons of business books in the mail because I was really into business book reviews...in 2004. At a bookstore the other day, I flipped through The Long Tail yet I bought Madame Bouvary instead. Anyone that groks me today (and only today matters) could sense that. The gesture algorithms would lump into this conclusion: Nix sending Evelyn a business book to review. Evelyn is not doing biz books. Semicolon. End do-loop. Wrong again! It depends. I absolutely adore and HIGHLY recommend this recent purchase: former VP of Trend, Design and Product Devolopment at Target's book, The Trendmaster's Guide: Get a Juump on What Your Customers Wants Next.

Bonus:Friends don't hold friends hostage to the past.

Last time I met my ex-husband for coffee he gathered all he knew about me about him like trusty library reference materials. To him, I was still the person that had left an ambitious dot-com career, him, and Salt Lake City.

"So you're dating a Republican?" he peered at me quizzically like a play being performed without regard to memorized lines from the script. I felt like a snapshot. Not a live, evolving being. Whereas, said Republican (now ex-lover) is one of my closest friends and every time we meet I'm a fresh discovery he's eager to learn about. And vice-versa.

Recently I wrote this to a close friend: "Be careful (and I will too) with preconceptions and assumptions....it can kill the mystery of the other person. There's unfathomable depths to both of us, all of us. Trust me you have only stratched the surface of the Infinite expressing itself as Evelyn -- we're even a mystery unto ourselves. Let's stay curious explorers, k?"

Wordplay: GROK (Source:) To grok (pronounced GRAHK) something is to understand something so well that it is fully absorbed into oneself. In Robert Heinlein's science-fiction novel of 1961, Stranger in a Strange Land, the word is Martian and literally means "to drink" but metaphorically means "to take it all in," to understand fully, or to "be at one with." Today, grok sometimes is used to include acceptance as well as comprehension - to "dig" or appreciate as well as to know.

As one character from Heinlein's novel says:

'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man.

p.s. Grokking isn't Martian. In fact it's reverse: It's alien when Earthbound humans deny their inherent grok capacity. As my teacher said last night, "Truth is innate. There's nothing more natural for a human being than enlightenment; everything else feels quite unnatural." You protest: moi, enlightened? Fine, fine, you may have the dimmer switch turned a bit too far on your awareness of said enlightenment. Yet the light's equally available, and as close as the turning of a knob.

Aug 02, 2006

"Bloghers! We loved meeting you all last weekend in San Jose. You’re all such clever/inspiring/lovely/saucy people... We of ThisNext were floored!

Speaking of floored and saucy, let’s talk about VODKA. Here are the winners of the Modern Spirits Vodka drawing. We noticed that each superspecial vodka bottle is hand numbered. Wow, talk about small batch!"

So starts Alyson Wilson's breezy woosy email. I knew I liked Alyson, ThisNext.com community director, when she had a 'dark and bitter' (chocolate of course) category on her ThisNext list. And it was cinched when I saw she loved Charles Chocolates so much that owner Chuck Siegal was part of the closed beta listing his own favs.

ThisNext is a new entrant into the social commerce space (in closed beta until August 21st, but I got a demo). Based on my chat with Alyson my intuition tells me this is a curious Web 2.0 company to watch: They have wads of women working there, for starters. But this ain't a post about ThisNext. Nowthat's later.

Melkon's wife, Litty Mathew, a foodie with a classical French cooking education, hated the taste and burn of straight liquor.

So he concocted little vodka infusions with fruits, spices and even tea that she could sip at family meals. She not only drank them, she enjoyed them.

Soon the couple's friends who also disliked the taste of hard liquor—including a few burly cousins who will remain unnamed—clamored for their own signature flavors.

Melkon infused celery and fennel seed for one, lavender and honey for another and an inspired chocolate-orange vodka after a party faux pas where he spilled a box of chocolates.

Soon after, Modern Spirits was born. An act of love, don't you think?

Bonus: Talk about customer co-creation and innovation: "Vodka Hits New Haute. It may cost millions to become a vintner, but for $15,000, you can produce your own superpremium vodka. Southern California-based Modern Spirits, which recently launched its own line of Haute flavored vodkas (more about them in a moment), invites those with a passion to create their own unique flavored vodka to belly up to the distillery. There, they can create theirone-of-a-kind flavored spirit. The company leads clients through a five-step process to produce their custom creation, starting with a flavor profile that identifies their passions, personalities and palates." - The Nibble

Wordplay: Cyrano de Bergerac's final word in the film: Panache.Stanford Summer Theater festival actor Fabrice led a post-screening discussion and I quote since his French is far and away better than mine: "Panache is personal flair, your own plume, your signature." I'd add your unique swagger.Etymology: Fig. sense of "display, swagger" first recorded 1898 (in translation of "Cyrano de Bergerac"), from French.

I'm still a little woozy - although I admit I like word woosy better: oozy; wet - from BlogHer. Not to mention hungover from all my deep hanging out excursions to downtown purveyors throughout Silicon Valley in the days preceding and hence. (I hardly imbibe; I'm talking over-stimulation-mental-overload-heady.)

So before I start, I've breathed, ate, drank the 10X return in five to seven years tonic to the point of oblivion. (My career's been primarily in high-tech. And start-ups.)

And so naturally I too disparaged those obviously unambitious women that didn't have a clue about leverage, and scaling. The worse thing you could call one of those women entrepreneurs was....shall I dare?

But don't you dare call her a "lifestyle entrepreneur". Though her original goal was to spend more time with her kids, she is also highly ambitious. In 10 years, she hopes to have a $25 million firm "with New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on the letterhead," she says. - "Bootstrapping: Lesson 3 Work from Home" story on Small Biz Booster, founded by Yvonne Shortt with $865, Inc. July 2006

...is the headline in the Business section of the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm reading that front page this past Friday at the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company hours before I head over for BlogHer Friday night welcome reception.

I notice a thread at the conference - both in the panels and about the conference itself: we're grappling with with the stay-small-don't-sell-your-soul or monetize-it-baby question. Is bigger always better or is small the new big question. The What is success question. The tug-of-war reflects my own internal state of mind lately.

Friday I chat with Teri Hope, the owner of Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company, talking about the recent article "Stanford's Boulevard of Broken Beans." As her lease expired at a Simon Group owned mall her Palo Alto Coffee Roasting Company and Cafe Noir espresso bar closed because Simon, whom bought the mall from Stanford University, only wants national chains with national marketing budgets as tenants. Economies of scale, that's Capitalism 101, right?

"Last year, the first BlogHer convention was patched together by three gals and a slow server, and attracted a couple hundred female bloggers.

This year, things have blown up. In a big way."

Patched together wasn't exactly my impression of last year's BlogHer. Blown up has a many connotations too. Author Justin Berton appears to imply BlogHer's the real deal now - what with somewhere on the order of 700 to 800 women attending. Real stalwart sponsors like GM and Johnson & Johnson. Now that's success.

Towards the end of the session "Is the Next Martha Stewart a Blogger?" a web 2.0 male executive addresses the panel (knitting, jewelry, gardening, food): "[Martha Stewart and]Oprah really managed her brand. It sounds like what you are doing are lifestyle business." Egads. Not yet another lifestyle business. You poor dainty creatures, you're thinking small.

Teri Hope is a woman who trekked 100 miles round trip for a cup of North Beach espresso and coffeehouse discourse in the 70's before creating and running her coffeehouse in 1982. And a Hawaiian coffee plantation: "The vision was seed to cup." No, no, no, she explained, to VCs, financiers and franchisers. Small, purposefully.

At the Martha Stewart panel, Margaret Mason observed the scorn given to women points of view and worldviews ("you doing, what, a wedding blog?"): "Women have shopping blogs, but men have cool-hunting blogs...that's ok, we'll be laughing all the way to the bank."

If mommy blogging (and mothering) are radical acts in this day and age, then let's up the ante and be full-blown revolutionaries. Let's operate lifestyle businesses if we want to. (Not just women here: Metrosexuals, LBGTs, men who live/lived in Europe and renaissance souls value lifestyle and lifestyle biz too.)

The big boys want to play boutique too. I glance down at Friday's Wall Street Journal Money & Investing front page: "The agility of a boutique. The reassurance of a global powerhouse." The UBS Global Asset Management advertisement continues to boutique-ize their copy: "agility, innovation, and personalized service."

To see the future of business, walk into a McDonald's in Columbus, Ohio. In that extraordinarily ordinary Midwestern city (trust me -- I grew up there), Mickey D's has begun rolling out a new look, one that owes to more Greenwich Village cafes than to exurban drive-throughs.

The Starbucks-ifcation of the golden arches is another indicator of how deeply a design sensibility has seeped into American business. - "Good Investing by Design," Yahoo Finance's The Trenddesk, Dan Pink, July 19, 2006

How quaint, McD's copying Starbucks. It wasn't so long ago that Howard Schultz sat in one of those cozy Milano cafes that triggered the Starbucks epiphany.

Schultz's vision of coffee and community was formed during a trip to Italy in 1983. The espresso bars of Milan and Verona were teeming with people stopping in for good coffee and some company. Bring this to the U.S., Schultz thought, and people will definitely come. - from Sally's Place for food, beverage, and travel

Faun tells me the reasons she enjoys the personal touch of a small business: "You become part of the community. You know your customer's tastes, you watch their children grow, you set roots down in a place."

Before I leave, Teri brings out her collection of now rare books from her market research days in the early 80s including one called Penny Universities: History's Colourful Coffee-Houses and The Romance of Coffee. As I recounted to a close friend, I left wistfully fantasizing how cute it would be to own a petite literary bookshop with a side salon de thé attached. (I'm a tea gal myself.)

Since there is sooooo many boutique stories and stories about boutiques and my pretty little head doesn't know where to begin or end, I think I'm going to share little vignettes for at least the next week. Tres petite vignettes. Morsels, really: Delicate confections enrobed with a kiss.

1751, "decorative design," originally a design in the form of vine tendrils around the borders of a book page, especially a picture page, from Fr. vignette, from O.Fr., dim. of vigne "vineyard" (see vine). Sense transferred from the border to the picture itself, then (1853) to a type of small photographic portrait with blurred edges very popular mid-19c. Meaning "literary sketch" is first recorded 1880, probably from the photographic sense.

p.s. If truth be told, the roots thing can freak the Bohemian, vagabond, Americanly-mobile, wanderlust restless side within me. Closer, not necessarily smaller, may mean my tendrils will be inextricably linked and enmeshed in an intricate, inextricable, committed tenderly beautiful pattern.

p.p.s. Maybe woosy is right word when you are weak at the knees because of the charming allure of women's objects of sociability (woos-y: ooze, wet)? And Faun Skyles' Los Gatos Gourmet is tentatively opening September 1st. Don't worry you'll be hearing more...I may most possibly be hosting salons there.

Jun 28, 2006

"Still - in a way - nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small - we haven't the time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time." - Georgia O'Keefe

The "number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss [important] matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 percent." Americans social circle of intimate friends has been shrinking since 1985, cites a study to be published in the June 2006 issue of American Sociological Review, the General Social Survey (GSS), "one of the nation's longest running surveys of social, cultural and political issues.

"When the survey was conducted in 1985, Americans most commonly said they had three close friends whom they'd known a long time, saw often, and with whom they shared a number of interests. They were almost as likely to name four or five close friends, and the relationships often sprang from their neighborhoods or communities." - "Living to Work Can Be a Lonely Life," PhillyBurbs.com, June 27, 2006

"Whenever people come, there is useless talk. Whenever I go, and visit, I have the unpleasant feeling of interfering with other men's business. Now I can do nothing better than follow the examples of Sun Ching and Tu Wu-lang, who confined themselves within locked doors. Friendlessness will become my friend, and poverty my wealth." - Matsuo Basho

Friends, we sigh collectively, you can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em.

Trust, authenticity, and social search came up over and over again at last week's Supernova conference. David Parmet tells me the backchannel folks played a virtual drinking game chugging a make-believe 'shot' each time a speaker mentioned the phrase "user generated content."

Which factors make you most comfortable purchasing a product (source: Mediaedge) - 76% say because "a friend recommended it"

What's the best source for advice on a new product (Yankelowich) - (Highest percentage of options, but I missed precise number) - "Another consumer"

Among best sources for new ideas about products? (NOP) - 92% say friends

My two cents: The trend to listening to friends (word-of-mouth ain't new) and customers like yourself extends beyond "well, marketers are sleazy, journalists lap up everything PR dishes." I really think it's a hunger for connection, for intimacy, for safe and genuine human bonding, for expression, for expansionespecially as social circles contract to our nuclear family.

"Things go in cycles. People are [gravitating] to smaller groups," said Mena Trott, co-founder, SixAparton Thursday commenting on a question about mass communities. Several informal hallway conversations raved about Wednesday's more intimate, smaller "give and take" workshop format. It's hard to follow that up with the auditorium lecture format of Thursday, Friday -- and at least one attendee I know decided that she'd already experienced the climax Wednesday, so she skipped the rest of the conference.

At Supernova's Thursday lunch I'm chatting with Mike Sigal and we're chatting about art, bohemianism, and bacchanals, so I figure it's as good a time as any to mention an event idea I've been kicking around. I get a fraction into my 30-sec description and he blurts, "Oh, a salon!" He got it in only two notes. I shared my dilemma finding appropriate space. "And it's got to be a garden, it's a Garden of Eden, forbidden fruit theme," I said.

I think that's when Mike realizes I must be fixated on mass scale, TechcruchRiya sold-out bash size. "Think intimate, 20 people max, three featured artists." Duh. In a super-size me, all-you-can-eat buffet, megahit nation, it's easy to forget that only a handful of poets attended Kenneth Rexroth's Friday salon (think Ginsberg, Kerouac, Synder). And they sent merely one hundred postcard invites for their infamous Howl reading launching a poetry renaissance and one can claim the entire countercultural movement of late 50s, sixties.

Yet who cares if we don't launch any movements, anyhow. We will have moved ourselves to create art, and to unlock our own hearts.

"When you wake up, you wake up out of this [illusion of] "me and you"...there is no such thing as a personal relationship between a you and a me...There is no Other. Look at the implications of awareness that there is no other." - Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti (some transposing done)

I'll say something radical, and then we can go on like I didn't say that. Having one intimate relationship where you go all the way in depth, where the idea of even relating disappears, the artificial sense of boundary melts, is plenty. It's not a numbers game when it's all One.

It's not a numbers game. "I only read about 10 blogs a day religiously. Each of those blogs is written bya person I know and love,"confessed danah boyd weeks ago. "I am glad I am not alone", replies venture capitalist blogger Fred Wilson. I'll refrain from commenting how many blogs I now read lest I offend anyone. Most days it's in the single digits. Way down from the 350+ I used to track two years ago. (p.s. You don't track your friends.)

I only reply to a mere fraction of the comments and emails I receive (I read everything) because I'd need a clone. I don't worry anymore how "unprofessional" that is, how many folks are peeved that I've ignored them - it's either that or I'd unravel the real life connection to people right in front of me. So I've given absolute priority to face-to-face connections.

"Love doesn't sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." - Ursula K. LeGuin

"I find that my family, friends, colleagues, and readers emailing me links, tagging them for me in delicious, and leaving them in the comments is the single most useful way to stay on top of what's important," adds Fred in another post (an investor in delicious btw) while musing "Is Meta Better?"

Yahoo's VP of Product Strategy, Bradley Horowitz, at Supernova concurs: We're onto the fourth phase of search (1-human editorial, 2- mass automation, 3-topological analysis), social search, which combines all three, editorial + automation (it's not just a couple of Stanford students named Jerry and David doing the grunt work) + your friends.

The morning-glory --

In the daytime, a bolt is fastened

On the frontyard gate. - Basho

We live in an age where we collect 'friends' like trading cards on MySpace, Tribe, LinkedIn (David Sifry's quip), and as in any age it is habitual to keep the bolt of our heart fastened. I know in my own life I've said I want intimacy, but I've often run in the opposite direction. My therapist was my close confidant four years ago. (Less than the whopping average of 2.08 the study cites - thank god for those fractional friends!)

Today I easily count at least eight extremely close friends; friends I can count on to discuss the bread and wine of life, and ones that would share their last dollar with me as I with them if need be.

Paradoxically, at the same time every person that enters my life in person, however briefly, be it in line for a jasmine green tea with tapioca pearls at the mall or sitting across from me at Peet's or riding BART into the city enters my life like a momentary shooting star and is my best friend at least while they are in my presence, even though we may never meet again physically, tangibly, they have my full attention now. I've had conversations on near-death experiences, God, sex, unconditional love, divorce, heartbreak, art, everything under the moon with complete strangers on a weekly, and damn near daily, basis of late.

"For a while now, I've had this vague desire to buy local produce, preferably organic, but local above all."

Me too. I have this urge to meet my neighbors. To spend time with birders Beatice and Don living down the block and borrow their binoculars as they teach me to look for robins and hummingbirds. I have the urge to eat food grown by goodhearted people I can laugh in person with and touch the very same strawberries and cherries and peaches they've plucked with their own bare hands ripe. I adore paying cash nearly everywhere to feel the real texture of the paper and metal between my palms and thus ground the person-to-person, mano a mano exchange.

And Basho's morning glory? That locked gate? His resignation to friendlessness? Poetry is dug from the earth of a poet's life:

"Obviously, Basho wished to admire the beauty of the morning-glory without having to keep a bolt on his gate. How to manage to do this must have been the subject of many hours of meditation within the locked house. He solved the problem, at least to his own satisfaction, and reopened the gate about a month after closing it," says Stephen Kohl, Japanese Literature prof (see also Basho's "Narrow Road to the Deep North).

From nihilism and hermitage, Basho flung open the garden gate unto "lightness." His later haiku collections "reject sentimentalism and take a calm, carefree attitude to the things of daily life, they often exude lighthearted humor." That Zen poet's path, this poet's path to Friendness converge:

He found that while "a sensitivity to things" expanded his awareness of beauty it also expanded his awareness of suffering. This heightened awareness of both beauty and suffering leads some people to despair. This is because our capacity to tolerate suffering in those around us seems to decrease as our awareness increases. When faced with an increase in awareness of suffering, many people instinctively turn away from sensitivity and become hardened, detached or distracted.

The Buddhist culture around Basho taught non-attachment as the correct approach to suffering. Non-attachment was not a turning away from suffering, but a calming of the emotional reactions to suffering through practice of the eightfold path. All other solutions were seen as delusions or deceptions.

Contrary to this prevailing belief, Basho demonstrated that we can avoid developing hard hearts without practicing non-attachment if, instead, we experiece our attachments in a deeper way. - "Wabi Sabi for Writers" article (can't wait for a copy of the July 2006 Wabi Sabi for Writers book)

Basho's path to enlightenment, to lightness, his 'Way of Elegance' is ultimately tantric. Delve into the heart of everything, throw yourself at the mercy of passion - beauty, suffering - rejecting nothing in its poignancy - with a no-holds-barred sensitivity, and in so doing the deepest intimacy and child-like exuberance splays open like a morning glory graced by the first sunbeams at dawn.

images from the backyard fence taken this morning...(except for Georgia O'Keefe's Morning Glory With Black that is)...believe it or not, I did not know how the morning glory got its name until just after 6:30 a.m. today it's not its trumpet-like self yet, oh no, it's a tight pinwheel tucked inward like a child's hugging pose, crouched, and then at some moment it awakens, greets the world wide wide open

Mar 21, 2006

"In some futuristic hell, robotic serfs gaze at a giant screen showing the crazed rantings of what is plainly George Orwell’s Big Brother. An athletically clad girl races in. She is pursued by helmeted goons and she carries a sledgehammer. With a cry, she hurls the hammer at the screen. It explodes. The serfs gaze on, bewildered and open-mouthed, as a voice tells us that, thanks to the Apple Mac, 1984 will not be like “1984”. Join us and be free." - "How Apple Ate the World", Sunday Times UK, March 19, 2006

In retrospect renegades may be revered, in real-time they're most often reviled.

Don't hold your breath for praise. Don't spin your wheels legitimizing pointless debates. Continue with the work at hand, digging into the soil and staying true to the muse.

Very (very) doubtful the folks at Sperry-UNIVAC were singing their praises. Computers aren't for everyone - they're for elite scientists, donchaknow.

First they ignore you,

then they ridicule you,

then they fight you,

then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi

Update: Keen: "Either we are pro-transhumanists or we are Luddites." Me: "Either we are pro-Keen or we are Marxist digital utopians." (The world's not so black and white. I actually like Keen's edgy thought-provoking blog even if I only agree with half of it. His "Confessions of a Silicon Valley Thief" is a FANTASTIC piece of writing.)

p.s. I did not grow up in privilege. Many realize that the privileges we do enjoy now comes with responsibility to give back. Which is where blogging's origins stem from - the old-time hacker ethic of giving, sharing.

We sat down for a couple of Singhas at an outdoor bar before he had to catch the island ferry and start the trek back to Bangkok, his home. We were directly across the tsunami memorial park started by a couple who lost their little girl Sacha. I had just departed there and lost in my own world when I bumped into Ed.

We talked about the beauty of the paper latterns the night before. Dozens, maybe hundreds, were released by families along the beach to commemorate the one year memorial. Their burning flames trailing into a stream of lights across the night sky. Watching the twinkling fires fade and grow distant and vanish from view into the starry night. They continued onward beyond the limits of my perception. "When I die," he said, "I'd like to have those latterns in my funeral."

He asked me how things were going with my writing and the blog.

"This story [tsunami recovery and rehab] is like trying to photograph the Grand Canyon," I told him. "It's more nuanced and complex than the aftermath." I lamented no photograph can possibly do the Grand Canyon justice. No telephoto lens, no panoramic lens, no IMAX film. It all falls short of the 360 degree experience in the flesh.

"If it's like the Grand Canyon, then every shot will be a great one," Ed rejoined.

And bingo! there he had it. The closest "strategy" I've come up with for sharing the avalanche (or dare I call it a tsunami) of material I have is to simply write keep writing vignettes. Dozens, hundreds if need be.

Yes, there are overarching themes and patterns and big picture stuff, and I fret those will be missed if one reads a standalone post only. I thought of using tagging to tie related themes and patterns. And I always keep pitching for essays in print media where there is space and attention for long-form journalism.

We're on for the "A New Voice: Citizen Journalism and Disasters" panel on Friday, March 3, 11:30 a.m. (I'm hoping as a citizen journalist and marketing consultant to tie-in the citj lessons learned to the PR, communications, and business audience in attendance.)

I called them vignettes in my head and in my journal, Brian called them microstories in our chat. Brian said one of the points he'd like to cover is blogs as ideal vehicles for microstories.

I don't normally blog private exchanges, but this small excerpt from our chat I thought needed to be shared.

[11:50:51 AM] Bala Pitchandi says: but from your perspective, how do you think the rehab is going?[11:56:17 AM] evelynrodr says: the rehab is a huge issue - no sound byte I'm afraid - physically Thailand is doing good - emotional and economic not so good (they calll it economic tsunami); Sri Lanka - lots of folks still in tents and the one-room wooden temp shelters still - but I am trying to also focus on soln's & what IS working in my writing

LATER BRIAN JOINS IN:

[12:30:58 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: I was talking with a group of tech non profit folks last week[12:31:23 PM] Brian Oberkirch says:and I told them that I was at a loss when people ask me how things are in NOLA now[12:31:27 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: I can't tell you one big story[12:31:33 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: but I can tell you a zillion small ones[12:31:53 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: That's what blogs can do well, I think. Help you make a composite image, made up of lots of story fractals.[12:31:55 PM] Bala Pitchandi says: just browse the NOLA metblogs for all of them --[12:32:01 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: right[12:32:05 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: lots of data points[12:32:22 PM] evelynrodr says: wow - bala asked me earlier about rehab - how's it going over there - I said I didn't have a sound byte - i tooo have zillion stories & vignettes[12:32:34 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: which, as a whole, are much truer than whatever 2:30 min. standup they'll do on the NBC news tonight[12:32:49 PM] Brian Oberkirch says: perfect, see....your experience is the same

Read all of it. It reminds me of how hard it is to erase mass media mentality from our minds. I remember reading the January 21 issue of The Economist story moaning "don't write off big media just yet". Among the proof: "Yahoo! has a media unit, but so far it hasn't produced any hits." (The media unit is mainly blogs if I recall.)

Rex's explanation of a blog's value is particularly useful and gets us out of mass-market mass-audience publication mode:

A couple of weeks ago, someone who owns a firm that manages phone systems for small businesses told me that he didn't want to start a weblog because he didn't want to "compete" with the 30 million blogs "out there," -- that the level of "discourse" on 30 million couldn't be that high.

I then said to him, "I could apply the same logic and come to the conclusion that I shouldn't have a business telephone. That reasoning would lead me to forego having a telephone because I'm competing with 300 million other "telephoners" and the level of discourse of all those phone conversations can't be that high."

And my number one favorite sentence:

Blog because there are two or three people who actually matter in your life or work, or who share your passion for a particular topic.

p.s. Rex says: "When you set up a weblog, don't think of it as launching a "publication" or any other "mass media" and don't measure success in terms of "size of audience." Good, my next blog has an even smaller 'audience' size potential than this one.

Feb 22, 2006

While I was on Phi Phi island, a British tourist living in Hong Kong tells me he sees the American press as "entertainment." He doesn't read it for any insight. That's a pity...

That it's true. Thank god then there are NGOs including UN-Habitat that have noted the human rights issues related to the tsunami.

I hadn't written anything hard hitting yet because I'm looking for the appropriate venue (I'm not sure this blog is it) and I needed distance and perspective to remain fair and balanced. (BTW, I'm available for podcast interviews, etc. now that I'm home. Plus thinking of guest contributing to more appropriate and wider venues like Global Voices, WorldChanging - any other media suggestions?)

Within the first hour of my arrival in Bangkok in mid-December, the evening is winding down at Noreiga's Bar which is the meeting place I've arranged with Graeme, whom did work with UN-Habitat post-tsunami.

Stefan just happens to be there that evening when I arrrive from umpteen hours in the air from San Jose via Tokyo. He's just met Graeme himself - he came for the music and drinks. I briefly introduce myself as a writer and survivor.

"So you're here to write about the tsunami."

"Yeah."

"The land grab, heh?"

"What land grab?"

We don't get far in our conversation before Stefan grows weary: "Ughh, can we talk about something else." Fair enough - it's not exactly light bar conversation anyhow. And it's way past two in the morning.

Turns out Stefan worked non-stop for days after the tsunami getting German tourists safely back home through his job at a major tour operator. I sense that never ever talking about the tsunami again would suit him fine.

It didn't take me long to find out land grab Stefan was talking about.

When I left Phi Phi island on January 1st, folks whose homes, bungalow resorts, restaurants, and shops were completely destroyed (repairs were allowed) still hadn't obtained permission to rebuild as the government "considers" the new zoning plan.

After the entire evacuation of the island in the days after the tsunami, many islanders have been yet to return and still live in camps in Krabi (on the mainland).

The common refrain up and down the coast especially among business owners: "The government is colluding with wealthy investors about turning it all into a millionaire's paradise."

That's just the tip of iceberg.

Prime real estate is at stake. Much of the Thailand was the King's dominion. Over generations, families lived on the land and passed it on, but didn't own it. Private property titles are a newer phenomenon - and like anything else in Asia they can be bought for a price.

As a human rights worker told me, "Those families have been 'in the way' [of developers obtaining title] for a long time. Once the tsunami came, their problems conveniently were wiped away. The developers even cite karma as the reason they deserve the land."

When there's not a building left standing and the occupants have fled for a night or two in the hills, new titles for new owners suddenly appear overnight.

I'm no investigative journalist, but I heard too much from varied sources to dismiss. Even basic media literacy teaches us to peer closer and know what's at stake and who's invested where and what their interests are.

There is a lot of money at stake on the postcard-perfect Andaman coast, you hardly have to read between the lines. You just have to talk to people outside of government authorities and chambers of commerce.

Besides NGO reports, thank god for international press like The Economist.

"[R]esidents in the harder hit areas, such as the Lower Ninth Ward (which was also hammered by Hurricane Betsy in 1965), would have until May 20th to show that they would return in sufficient numbers to keep their neighborhoods alive. If they fail to do so, homeowners could be "bought out" in some way and the areas in question could revert to swampland or be turned into parks...

[But] in general, plans to shrink the city's size could mean the end of a lot of poor black neighborhoods." - "The Big not-quite-so-Easy", The Economist, January 21-26, 2006

"Here people at least call a spade a spade," says one Asian-American volunteer in Khao Lak, "In the U.S., they'll surreptiously take a section of New Orleans and find a way to give it to Disney for a new park." He says that's exactly the rumor he hears in African-American neighborhoods back home: Disney is eyeing distressed property in New Orleans.

I've seen too many tsunami recovery and anniversary fluff pieces with loads of inaccuracies from American newspapers notably from those whom sent a reporter overseas for a few days. My suggestions to local newspapers as your profits keep sinking:

Do a better job at covering your own locale and region and syndicate that to other papers. That's your core competency.

Editorially guide citizen journalists that aren't familiar with foreign audience's interests on what is of interest to an outsider reader who isn't enmeshed in the same way. What they may dismiss because it's common knowledge locally might be newsworthy and compelling to a foreign audience.

p.s. I'll be using new funds (it's tapped out now) coming in to the artisan journalism microfund to give Mon, a woman that I quickly trained to blog and lives in Khao Lak, Thailand a small stipend. I'd love to have her supply me with ground information for a while. For instance, Mon personally knows Ratree, the woman who is in the infamous land dispute in Laem Pom. (Ratree's story was originally published in Bangkok Post last April. And has been covered internationally. The BBC's early presence in Laem Pom is to be applauded; it helped kept the guns and mafia at bay and kindled the international interest which resulted in the Chicago Tribune's recent follow-up.) There's plenty more stories though. BTW, Mon is thinking about having her own public blog too (she likes to live simply in nature and in the background, so it's a bit of a sell).

p.p.s. I spent five weeks in Phi Phi, Phuket and Khao Lak through January 26, 2006.